


abandoned flesh

by ninata



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Game, messy drunk saihara
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-09
Updated: 2018-03-09
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:23:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninata/pseuds/ninata
Summary: Shuuichi drunkenly spills more than he should to Maki.





	abandoned flesh

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for:  
> underage drinking, alcoholism, bad coping, references to self harm, bad mental illness, LOTS of suicide/threatening suicide/overdosing

Shuuichi takes a languid drink. The heat of intoxication is comforting. Like an embrace. Shuuichi remembers being touched. He remembers all of it— fond looks, smiles saved just for one person, stored up over the day and blossoming out as soon as _he_ walked by. He remembers his heart beating fast, feelings he wasn’t allowed to have. Feelings that were exploited for views, a subplot never reaching closure, meaningless, purposeless, just another example of how futile that month of Shuuichi's life had been.

Pink moscato. He gave up on using a glass after he opened the second bottle. Taking sips straight from it, he stares at the television screen.

Watching reruns of the last season didn't give any cathartic relief. Nothing about it did. He thought he'd be happy it was the final installment in the franchise, but that didn't help either. He thought things changing would help, but…

Does it ever really change? He thinks of why he joined. Taking mood stabilizers since he was ten years old, hated for sticking out so conspicuously, the system built specifically to torture people like him. Even if Danganronpa ends, the reason he was driven to join doesn’t.

Whatever.

Drinking makes it go away. Even if it's just for the night, even if the next morning he wakes up so sick he can't eat.

Shuuichi remembers when someone supported him. When he wasn’t scrambling for something to stop him from diving off the roof of his apartment building. When someone was kind to him, believed in him, had his back when no one else did.

As he finishes the second bottle, he contemplates Kaito Momota. Someone who didn’t truly mean what he was saying, as Shuuichi now understood. Someone who used people to feel confident.

He thinks of how warm his hands were. Rough, calluses around the middle fingers. He wanted to hold those hands. He wanted those hands to touch him.

Stupid. Doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead. Shuuichi lies on his back, bottle rolling around on his coffee table before settling. His vision swims, sways. He feels like time isn’t moving. He feels like his head isn’t attached to his body.

There’s a loud knock on the door. He groans, rolling onto his side.

“Saihara?”

He recognizes that voice. A shock of anxiety prickles in the back of his chest.

“Door’s open.” He slurs. There’s a click, and Maki Harukawa appears in his doorway. She immediately makes a face.

“It stinks in here…” Her eyes scan the room. “...You’re drunk again.”

Disgust. It feels _good_ to have someone be disgusted with him. At least he’s being looked at. He heaves himself upright, rocking like he may topple back over if he isn’t careful.

“Sorry...I’m sssorry.”

“No, you’re not.” She says it softly. It still hurts. Shuuichi likes hurting. “You're not even twenty yet, how do you keep...ugh. How much did you drink?”

He shrugs, and she’s by his side in time he doesn’t remember passing. His vision is still so fuzzy.

"—I'm _not_ an idiot, dammit!"

Their bodies both jump at the familiar voice. It’s at this moment Momota appears on screen. Shuuichi had forgotten the television was on, but Momota’s there, saying some nonsense. Harukawa’s head turns at her own voice. _You really are an idiot._ Shuuichi smiles, despite himself.

“...Why do you watch this stuff?” She feels around for his remote among the garbage and bottles. Flicks the television off.

“Becauseee...I miss him. Don’t you?”

Her look is sharp. Brown eyes shining dangerously past her eyelashes.

“You won’t get anywhere dwelling in the past, Saihara.”

Shuuichi barely considers that. Maybe he wants to stay put.

“I loved him, you know.” A pause. “I loved him…so much.”

Harukawa is silent for only a beat.

“I know you did.”

Shuuichi shuts his eyes. Screws them tightly shut. His face is a tight knot, his heart beating wildly in his chest. It hurts.

It hurts so much. Did Momota love either of them? Shuuichi doesn’t know. He thought they’d find happiness once they left the game. Something. Anything. Blind hope, but he was still living off his parents’ money, and Harukawa was still alone with no family, and Yumeno was still a forgettable nobody.

They all ended up at square one, even when their words inspired others. They still were miserable, living in a constant nightmare, even when people said it was time to draw a line. Even when people were inspired to speak out against the entertainment industry using depressed young adults for profit, the change was minimal, if it at all existed.

Harukawa was barely able to keep him in check. They were all so busy getting their lives back together. She couldn’t babysit, but he couldn’t keep living like this. Couldn’t keep getting up in the mornings thinking he’d put on his uniform and go out to the killing game, couldn’t remember to take all his medications and talk to his mom on the phone and pretend he wasn’t rotting from the inside out. This feeling’s a mold, bursting spores and festering under his skin. He can’t keep this up. He can’t live.

“I’m gonna get you water.” She says. “Don’t move, okay?”

Maybe he’s in love with Harukawa. Maybe he wants to be, so he has something new to keep him afloat. Maybe a man can’t be close to a woman without wanting to fuck her.

Maybe he’s just lonely. Maybe he’s just so, so fucking unbearably alone. Maybe he’s still thinking about Momota, and maybe he won’t ever forget.

No amount of rehabilitation could erase that he loved him. No amount of remembering who he was, no group therapies or memory replacement or nothing, none of it. Momota meant something. His feelings meant something. Right? Didn’t they?

When Harukawa walks back in, he’s crying.

Her face twists in a way he can’t parse. He’s resting his head in his arms, folded on his coffee table. He has no idea why the tears keep flowing, but maybe he’s feeling more selfish than usual tonight.

“Harukawa-san…” He croaks, making room for her to set down the cup. “What are...what are we supposed to do? What are we gonna do?”

“Didn’t you answer that yourself in your speech?”

“T-That was then. Don’t you get it? That was just b-bullshit. It was all just words.”

She coaxes him back into sitting upright, gently pushing the cup of water into his hands. He knocks it back too hard, water trickling past his lips and down his neck. He doesn’t care.

“I thought...we’d die. Then I thought, m-maybe we’ll be okay. Maybe we...maybe we can make a difference, or...or live some kind of normal life…" A cold, wet laugh. “What a joke. Why’d they make us remember? I wish we’d died. I wish we were living as fictional characters in a world we didn’t understand. I wish Shirogane-san was telling the truth.”

Harukawa watches him without trying to interrupt, her eyes downcast. He wants her to yell at him for being stupid. He wants her to prove him wrong.

But she can’t.

The anger wanes again. It always comes back to this.

“Harukawa-san, what’s stopping me from...from taking all the pills I have with a few shots of vodka? W-What’s stopping me from killing myself? Please. I-I don’t...know anymore. I can’t do this. I can’t keep...l-losing people, I can’t keep living in a world that...that _hates_ me. Laughs at me. I-I hate...being d-different. I just want to be normal. I want my m-mom to like me, and my s-stepdad to be nice to me, a-and I want a real job, and, and friends, and…”

He wipes his face with his hand. He’s barely able to speak past his sobs.

“I-I want to be _loved._ I want to be _happy._ Just...j-just for once.”

Would Momota have loved him, had he survived?

Shuuichi doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know anything anymore. Calculations, deductions. It’s so far from him, now. He’s lost that.

He’s lost something important. He’s become something different from he was before, something better and worse and somehow more miserable. He isn't the murder fetish otaku he was before, edging himself with razor blades and dreamed up plans of flashy homicide. But he isn't that capable detective, either.

He's numb. He's living life half-awake. He feels like he isn't human. He feels like maybe he never was.

"If you die…" Harukawa says, her lip trembling. "I'll never forgive you. You can't— You can't _leave_ us like that. Do you think...either of us know? That either of us want to live? There's been so much death, Saihara. I can't…lose either of you. I _won't._ And if you can't live for yourself, live for us until you can be happy again."

"I was never happy—"

"Then just wait it out, you selfish bastard. We'll change this stupid world. We'll...figure out something. And if it means we have to take your sorry ass to rehab every weekend and treat you like a fucking child, fine. But I'm not losing you. I'm not losing anyone ever again."

He wants to feel like that doesn't help. He wants to feel like she's being selfish. But if someone needs him, that's good enough, isn't it?

He leans against her arm, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

"...You're not mad?"

"Mad…?"

"T-That I love Momota-kun…"

She shakes her head. "I told you, I knew. We...both loved him. But it's too late for that now."

She sighs. Shuuichi shuts his eyes.

He doesn't know what will happen to them, but maybe that's fine.

Maybe he just needs to live day by day.

Maybe...he'll find happiness that way.

Maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> i doubt this'll get any attention but it's been on my mind and i wanted to write it. i'd like to say my thoughts on momota are more complicated than saihara's are (and saihara's are coming from a place of Fresh Wounds and so he's assuming the worst) and i don't tihnk he like. hated them. it's complicated.


End file.
